THE OSCILLATION ” WASTED SPACE ”

THE OSCILLATION
“WASTED SPACE”

Demian Castellanos releases Wasted Space, his sixth full-length under The Oscillation moniker, and shares the video for the title track – a mind-bending visual reflection on technology’s ceaseless encroachment on our lives…

Following a recalibration and consolidation with their recent electronics-inflected album, 2018’s U.E.F., The Oscillation is back with their sixth and most ambitious album to date. A meditation on the nature of existence in the face of what can be insurmountable odds, Wasted Space finds The Oscillation painting from the darker shades of the kaleidoscopic scale. Perhaps the best example of that being the title track of the album, for which the band has just released a mind-bending new video in collaboration with Antonio Curcetti.

Talking about the video, Demian Castellanos – the mastermind behind The Oscillation – explains: “The concept behind the video is about the idea of losing yourself in technology and merging with it. It definitely pursues my previous themes of alienation and feeds them through Antonio’s vision and third eye.” Antonio, the video’s director adds: “‘Wasted Space’ comes from a technological journey, the same each of us goes through since technology has changed our daily lives. As in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, where the main character becomes part of the interface and machinery he is investigating, in ‘Wasted Space’ Demian discovers his multi-self through the monitors.”

Discussing the album, Demian muses: “The origins of Wasted Space go back to Monographic in 2016. That was a very bleak and heavy record and I really needed to move out of that mindset. Making U.E.F freed me up to write a coherent collection of narrative songs and compositions and Wasted Space is a partial continuation of the journey started with U.E.F, but one that re-incorporates more song-based ideas again.” What’s immediately apparent is that Wasted Space sets it’s stall well away from the prosaic third-eye tropes that have become orthodoxy. Album opener ‘Entity’ establishes the pace with a focus on the dancefloor as much as on the navigation of existence. Fusing muscular grooves with an industrial wall of sound, these are bold steps into wholly new territories.

“There’s an irony at play here,” considers Castellanos. “It’s a twisted party song, albeit a party for one.” But what a party it is. The mutant disco is bolstered by the rhythmic call-and-response of ‘Drop’, a track that eschews conventional methods of dance sensibility for more instinctive and primal urges. This is music that calls out to the suitably attuned. “We’re reaching out on an innate level,” says Castellanos. “It’s a form of wordless communication that transcends the limitations of verbal language and thought processes.”

Wasted Space’s more somatic moments are tempered and balanced by episodes of contemplation and reflection. Fuelled by dreamy, orchestral sweeps and mournful, sustained notes, ‘The Human Shell’ is a deceptive yet redemptive piece that at first glance appears to be resigned to the futility of existence. But look once again and there you’ll find hope. “People will be able to relate to this song,” states Castellanos. “There’s a lot of love and empathy in there and it reaches out to say that we’re not alone, that we don’t have to exist independently of each other.”

Bringing Wasted Space to an emphatic conclusion is the epic instrumental ‘Luminous Being’. Ambitious in scope and delivery, it methodically and unequivocally slow releases repressed emotions to throw the wider world into sharper focus. Hedonistic yet reflective, Wasted Space is an album that moves purposely along a high wire as it finds the perfect balance between dealing with life and escaping it. The Oscillation’s finest album yet, Wasted Space is the area to which you’ll return to again and again.

From the very first note, it’s easy to play the comparison game– it sounds like a faster take of Can’s “Mushroom” or a denser version of Silver Apple’s “A Pox On You”- but the band is so committed to the chugging rhythm and vapour-trail guitar detonations that who they sound like is much less important than how hypnotic they sound.” Pitchfork

“Absolutely bloody huge… it sounds like the result of late night parties and blissed out hedonism punctuated by random dives into obscure vinyl and visits to Discogs.” Gigwise

“A vast shiny beast of hypnotic, gig-shaking rhythms and riffs” MOJO

“What Gives The Oscillation a true sense of identity is the way they manage to subvert and twist psychedelia into something that’s wholly their own.” The Quietus